1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the world wide web. More particularly, the present invention relates to providing update notification of Web page content or location changes.
2. Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web ("Web") is a massive collection of Web pages that are linked together by the Internet, the worlds largest public network. With the Web and the Internet, a user has access to a wealth of diverse and, in many instances, volatile information at his fingertips.
Today, the main piece of software used for connecting to and displaying Web pages on a client is called a Web browser. The main function of a Web browser is to interpret the information received from a Web page and display it on a computer monitor. Most of today's Web browsers have a feature called bookmark (or favorites). This feature allows a user to tag (or save) the address or Uniform Resource Locator ("URL") of a favorite Web page and add a short description of the Web page in an address book. The next time the user wants to connect to his favorite Web page, he selects the Web page from the address book without having to remember or type in the address. Thus, the bookmark feature gives the user a quick way of connecting to his favorite Web page.
However, with Web pages often being constantly updated with new information, there is no feature or mechanism that provides an indication of whether, when, or how much the contents of a Web page has changed. This is important because a user will want the most updated information of a Web page that he has saved or cached. The only way to determine whether a Web page has changed or changed significantly is to download the Web page. This may be a formidable task if the user wants to update several favorite Web pages saved or cached because the user has to download each Web page manually and determine whether the Web page has changed significantly enough to replace the old version.
Therefore, there is a need in the technology for an apparatus and method of providing update notification of Web page content or location changes using existing mechanisms.